History test gets N.O. tour guides riled up

Before they can climb aboard buses, take the reins of horse-drawn carriages or lead the curious to the burial spots of the city's most famous former residents, New Orleans tour guides must become proficient in the city's history, architecture and culture. All guides must pass a heavy-on-history test even if in the course of talking about ghosts and cocktails they never have to explain that New Orleans was once both a French and Spanish colony.

Gerald Herbert/The Associated PressTour guide Candace Kagan leads a tour through Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 recently. Several New Orleans tour guides are suing the city over ordinances that require them to pass a history exam and submit to background and drug tests.

"It's a pretty comprehensive test. It talks about the rules and regulations of being a tour guide, the history of the city, the culture of the city, physical landmarks of the city," said Tom Nagelin, president of The Tour Guides Association of Greater New Orleans, a 200-member nonprofit professional association for the city's tour guides. "Just about anything people in the city would ask about is on the test."

Despite the requirement, however, there isn't much consequence for flubbing historical facts or making them up along the way.

The city's roughly 550 tour guides are governed by the Ground Transportation division of the city's Department of Safety and Permits, which requires that they pass a test and submit to background and drug tests before receiving a license to operate tours. It is illegal to operate a tour without a license.

The city test is a 70-question exam that draws heavily from "The Beautiful Crescent: A History of New Orleans," a nearly 250-page book by Joan B. Garvey and Mary Lou Widmer that was published in 1983.

"That is like the bible for tour guiding," Nagelin said. "Just about everything you're asked about on the test, you can find in that book."

Cracking down

The training and licensing of tour guides has generated attention in recent months after the city over the summer began enforcing an ordinance that requires tour guides to submit to a background check and drug test and provide various pieces of personal information to the taxicab bureau before they are legally able to conduct a variety of tours around town. Passing the tour guide test is also a requirement for licensing.

Four New Orleans tour guides filed suit against the city of New Orleans in the Eastern District Court of Louisiana Dec. 13, charging that the city has violated their right to free speech by requiring that they meet those requirements to obtain licenses that allow them to lead tours.

The guides have charged that the city's requirements are unconstitutional under the First Amendment, because it restricts their ability to express themselves.

Eliciting mixed reactions

The lawsuit is not supported by all tour guides, many of whom believe that the formal license lends credibility to the job. They do, however, believe that the recently enforced requirements are onerous and place an undue financial burden on practicing tour guides.

"The city knows that our association is absolutely backing the idea of maintaining professional, regulated guides," Nagelin said. "What we disagree with is some of the conditions to become a guide. Requiring a tour guide to undergo a full criminal history report every two years is silly, onerous and costly in time and money."

Tour guides support the test requirement of licensing because it builds in an operating standard for the job.

Would-be tour guides are given 30 minutes to complete the city's test, city spokesman Ryan Berni said. They must answer 70 percent of the questions correctly to pass. Of the 20 tests administered each year about five to seven people don't pass, Berni said.

Options offered

In addition to its own test, the city recognizes those administered by two other organizations: Friends of the Cabildo and Delgado Community College. Would-be tour guides who pass those organizations' tests do not have to sit for the city test.

The tests vary in length. Friends of the Cabildo is the longest at 100 questions, while the Delgado exam has 75 questions. They all feature a variety of multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank and short answer questions. Testers, again, must answer 70 percent correctly to pass.

All three tests use "The Beautiful Crescent" as a primary reference.

Mick McIlwain, chairman of the walking tour guide committee for The Friends of the Cabildo, believes the nonprofit organization's test is tougher than the city's. The Friends of the Cabildo exam also draws from a five-inch binder comprised of information that a committee revises each year.

The Friends of the Cabildo test has 100 questions, 30 more than the city exam. As with the exam administered by the city, testers must get 70 percent of the questions right.

"Virtually everyone passes," McIlwain said. In the end, the guides are able to tell the difference between a gallery and a balcony. They can distinguish between a creole cottage and shotgun house. They even know that some structures in the city are composed of "river brick" pulled from the mud of the Mississippi River, while others are made from "lake brick" drawn from the dirt of Lake Pontchartrain.

"We pile a lot on these people and they learn a bunch," McIlwain said.

About half the people who receive tour guide licenses take a course to prepare for the exam. Delgado Community College and Friends of the Cabildo both offer training courses.

"It's not necessary," Nagelin said of the courses. "Some people read books."

The Friends of the Cabildo class is offered once a year. Beginning in March, the courses last 13 days and last for seven or eight hours a day.

In addition to coursework, participants must practice public speaking and tricks of the trade like "you don't walk and talk at the same time," McIlwain said.

"People don't think about that, but there are people walking behind you," McIlwain said. "We want them to be comfortable in the public speaking portion of it."

McIlwain said the course has 22 to 23 available spaces each year and quickly fills.

At the end of the Friends of the Cabildo class, and after receiving a license, participants can either work as volunteer guides for the organization or as paid guides through a commercial enterprise, or both, McIlwain said. The Friends of the Cabildo operates two tours a day, six days a week. Tour guides all are volunteers and the money generated is used to fund exhibits in the Louisiana State Museum system.

The Delgado course is offered as a noncredit class in the college's Workforce Development and Education Unit. There are about 20 students in each class, which is offered three times a year and meets once each week for three hours. Not all of the students in the Delgado course end up sitting for the licensing exam, because many of them take the class just to learn about the area's history, said Bill Norris, who has taught the Delgado course since 2006.

Defending standards

"I think the thing that's special about the Delgado course is an emphasis is placed on tour guides as entertainers," Norris said. "We try to put the focus on the fact that a tour is not a history lecture. Instead, it's an entertaining collection of stories through which you can get the history."

Although it requires that guides pass a test to become licensed, the city does not monitor the information that tour guides share with visitors, Berni said.

The lack of any kind of regulation leaves open the possibility that guides can make up stories and pass along incorrect information to their customers, McIlwain said.

"That's a high probability," McIlwain said. "We do hear feedback, particularly from residents, that hear some bad information being passed on. I can't control what somebody else says to our visitors."

But the Friends of the Cabildo does use a system of comment cards and planted tour guests to ensure that its guides stick to the script, McIlwain said.

"One thing we want is accurate information," McIlwain said. "We don't want people to be making up stuff."

Jaquetta White can be reached at jwhite@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3494.